Below is my correspondence with the United Kingdom House of Commons Science and Technology Committee from January, which I am publishing now partly in response to further malicious attacks on the reputation of Andrew Wakefield in the London Times. The committee – presently dissolved due to the General Election – naturally failed to deal with the matter. The chairman of the committee, Stephen Metcalfe (in photo) –an elected politician – handed on my complaint to the clerk, Simon Fiander, who defended their claim that Wakefield had committed fraud by citing a British Medical Journal editorial of January in 2011 as if nothing had happened the interim. In essence they were claiming that because something had been said six years before it could be idly repeated. Although Fiander extended a specific invitation to submit evidence to the committee’s inquiry into research integrity three attempts were rejected. The reality is that when it comes to vaccination the British establishment cannot deal with the truth in any shape or form:

To the Hon Stephen Metcalfe MP, Chair of the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee

14 January 2017

Dear Mr Metcalfe,

It is my intention to submit evidence to the committee about research integrity but after consideration I decided to write to you about statements made in the committee’s recent publication Integrity in Research (Postnote 544) [1], which singles out the Wakefield 1998 Lancet paper as an example of fraud citing the editorial in the British Medical Journal by Godlee et al from January 2011[2]. While the committee may have done this in good faith it should not be in the position of knowingly committing errors of its own and therefore I suggest that the pamphlet is urgently withdrawn. Subsequent, to the publication of the Godlee editorial (and the accompanying articles by journalist Brian Deer) the position of the BMJ began to crumble.

A fundamental error in the Deer/BMJ case to swiftly emerge was that Mr Deer (who had no competence to interpret medical records) was making use of GP notes which were not available to the authors of the paper, and could not be used as a guide to what they knew.

Early on Dr Godlee was forced into a covering statement [3]:

"The case we presented against Andrew Wakefield that the1998 Lancet paper was intended to mislead was not critically reliant on GP records. It is primarily based on Royal Free hospital records, including histories taken by clinicians, and letters and other documents received at the Royal Free from GPs and consultants."

This sidesteps rather than addresses the problem.

Another issue that Godlee was forced to respond to was that the BMJ had failed to acknowledge its own conflicts, with its commercial relationships with MMR manufacturers Merck and GSK. In the end the BMJ put up a notice with a partial admission of the problem over the on-line editorial but not over the Mr Deer’s articles (which left readers none the wiser). Even so, the published notice only mentioned advertising revenue from the two companies and not the fact that the BMJ learning division received unlimited grants from Merck through its non-profit arm Univadis. And none of this, of course, received any of the publicity of the original publication [4, 5].

From the beginning the BMJ was obstructive about publishing comments pointing to (many) factual errors in Deer’s presentation [6]. This became more serious when the journal blocked in substance a detailed examination of the case, with new documentary evidence from a senior scientist Dr David Lewis [7]. In the wake of this a news article published by Nature contained further admissions from the journal [8]:

"Before publishing Lewis's letter, the BMJ asked Ingvar Bjarnason, a gastroenterologist at King's College Hospital, London, to review the materials. Bjarnason says he doesn't believe they are sufficient to support claims in the Lancet paper of a new disease process. He also questions whether "non-specific" on the grading sheets refers to colitis, saying it could refer to any kind of gut changes. But he says that the forms don't clearly support charges that Wakefield deliberately misinterpreted the records. "The data are subjective. It's different to say it's deliberate falsification," he says.

"Deer notes that he never accused Wakefield of fraud over his interpretation of pathology records. But he says that records read to him from the Royal Free pathology service clearly stated that the children's gut biopsies were within normal limits, even though they were reported in the Lancet paper as having enterocolitis.

"Fiona Godlee, the editor of the BMJ, says that the journal's conclusion of fraud was not based on the pathology but on a number of discrepancies between the children's records and the claims in the Lancet paper."

It should also be noted that both the histopathologist co-authors of the paper wrote to the journal on separate occasions repudiating Deer’s version of events [9,10].

The case continued to disintegrate in 2012 when Sir John Mitting fully exonerated the senior author of the paper Prof John Walker-Smith in the High Court (Wakefield, himself, not being funded to appeal) having failed to find evidence, central to the GMC case, that the paper was based on a study protocol proposed to the Legal Aid Board, or that it misreported data, or involved inappropriate or unauthorised investigations [11].

Later in 2012 the BMJ reported the conclusion of University College London (which had been drawn into the BMJ’s demands for inquiry) that there was no case to be answered. Zosia Kmietowicz wrote [12]:

"In a paper on the development of its new framework, UCL said that after taking advice from the UK Research Integrity Office and “a senior legal figure” it concluded that “the net result [from an investigation] would likely be an incomplete set of evidence and an inconclusive process costing a substantial sum of money."

It was also vastly inappropriate that Dr Godlee’s editorial was signed by another BMJ editor Dr Harvey Marcovitch, who was also at the time head of GMC panels (particularly while these matters were under legal appeal). The claim by BMJ that Deer’s articles were externally peer reviewed (but actually by Dr Marcovitch) was also apparently false (a real example of fraud?) [13].

The case that the Wakefield paper is a prime example of fraud seems to be politically motivated rather than historically well-founded.

Finally, I draw your attention to the fact – as I drew it to your predecessor Andrew Miller – that when Crispin Davis, CEO of Reed Elsevier and proprietor of the Lancet, denounced Dr Wakefield before committee in March 2004, he himself failed to disclose that he was a director of GSK and that it was actually his brother, Sir Nigel Davis, who had dismissed the MMR litigation in the High Court three days earlier [14].

[6] Martin Hewitt, How Brian Deer and the British Medical Journal Fixed the Record Over Wakefield (links to three parts) http://www.ageofautism.com/2015/03/how-brian-deer-and-the-bmj-fixed-the-record-over-wakefield-part-2.html

The Chair of the S&T Committee passed your email to me, and asked me to thank you for your letter.

In your letter you take issue with the way the Wakefield case is presented. This is set out in the 'POSTnote' produced by the Parliamentary Office for Science & Technology (POST), to which the Committee then refers in its call for submissions for its inquiry. The assertion in the POSTnote about 'fraud' is referenced to the 2011 Godlee article in the BMJ, although I recognise that you take issue with her about her actions and views in the case. I will pass on your letter to POST.

The Committee would in the meantime welcome a submission from you and/or Age of Autism for the inquiry.

Simon Fiander

Clerk, Science & Technology Committee

Dear Mr Fiander,

Thank you for your swift and courteous reply on behalf of the committee. It is, of course, for the committee to guard its own integrity, but I do point to the anomaly. The committee publishes comments as fact citing a six year old editorial when much has happened in the interim, and plainly this is not just in my opinion. New and contradictory evidence came to light; British Medical Journal had to back down on crucial matters; a High Court judge reviewed the evidence relating to reporting in the paper and dismissed the GMC case against the senior author; University College London finally backed down from holding an inquiry for lack of evidence (on the advice of the United Kingdom Research Integrity Office and a senior legal authority).

The committee itself was involved in these events. If we go back to November 2011, and the partial publication of Dr David Lewis’s report in BMJ Rapid Responses, the British Medical Journal plainly found itself out on a limb. Dr Godlee, mindful of the fact that the evidence was unravelling against Wakefield wanted UCL – which was increasingly wary of conducting an inquiry - to go after the other authors of the paper, and in her frustration called upon the Science and Technology Committee to take over the job. This sounds suspiciously like a witch hunt. Andrew Miller, on behalf of the committee replied (letter of 8 November 2011):

"You also indicate concerns about the broader questions of whether or not UCL adequately investigated the roles of all those who put their names to Dr Wakefield’s papers and whether there was pressure to minimise any investigations in order to protect the institution. These relate to the integrity of the academic institution as a whole and are not simply an issue of whether or not the institution promotes ‘good science’. This is a matter rather for a body such as HEFCE, which has the task of ensuring academic standards in publicly-funded bodies."

It is plain from this that the position had already moved on from the Godlee et al editorial of January 2011 which is now fully six years later being cited as established fact, while the message of the committee chair then was that it was outside the committee’s competence.

However, the committee also needs to alert itself to the problem of confirmation bias. A few paragraphs along from the statement:

"While deliberate fraud does occur (such as that involving Andrew Wakefield, whose1998 paper suggested a potential link between the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine and autism),.. it is thought to be extremely rare..."

we read:

"Risking public health, for example by asserting evidence that may cause people to decide to either undergo or refuse trials or treatment or to use products that have not been shown to be safe or effective. For example, despite Wakefield being struck off the medical register, and the retraction of his paper in 2010, the take up of the MMR vaccine has only recovered to the pre-1998 level in the last two years..."

In reality, in terms of research integrity we need good science irrespective of whether it fits in with the agenda of public health programmes, and what institutionally speaking has been done to Wakefield may not be a good model for public science. With all the focus on infectious disease and the expanding vaccine schedule there has been none on the ever increasing flood of autistic and otherwise neurologically compromised children entering our schools since 1998 (no explanation, no public concern and great deal of obfuscation). In Scotland, now, the number of young children with an autism diagnosis is likely to be above 1 in 30 and rising.

It might also be pointed out that while approximately 10 million people will have died in the United Kingdom since 1998 only three people have died from contracting measles (one of them actually due to gross medical negligence and all three otherwise very sick people), so it is necessary to have a sense of proportion. We need to remember that in 1998 Wakefield advocated splitting the vaccines, which was at the time an NHS option. This was rapidly removed by the government, thus politicising the issue. If people who raise questions about public health are just trodden underfoot there is a much bigger problem and the possibilities for corrupting the process are infinite. The committee should be very careful.

Comments

Surely,there needs to be a safe uncondescending place for the public to have an open respectful conversation to talk about "The Unmentionables" of Health and Safety Risk Assessments of Vaccination products !
Thank you John for your dedicated hard work.
We still have a House of Lords,and they are a mixture of good, bad, and indifferent,but as a united Great Britain they are still there for us !
Our own dear Lord Mackay of Clashfern stood apart and his elderly hands were shaking when
debating the assisted dying/suicide bill in 2013.
Where,General Wolfe was once asked, could the British army find more troops ? The Highlands ,said the hero ,"They are a hardy, intrepid race. And no great mischief if they fall"
No great mischief if you fall The Highland Experience by John Macleod .

Christine England's book on UK Vaccination policy for the relevant period may be helpful. The list of names on each committee is remarkably similar. Most are physicians. AW was driving his tank on to their manicured lawns ?

GMC processes for the period of the imposition of the civil standard (2008-16) were entirely "unsafe" for a vast number of reasons. AW unfairly prosecuted - after significant delay - in 2010. GMC shows "callous disregard" for its licensees for the relevant period ?

I don't think the Wakefield case is a mass of confusion. It is pretty simple. Reading the well-documented book, Callous Disregard by Andrew Wakefield is a good place to start. Dr. Wakefield a gastroenterologist was working with children with autism and discovered that when their gastroenterological symptoms were addressed, their behavior improved. He and 12 or so other researchers (including the eminent Dr. John Walker-Smith who was cleared of wrongdoing by the High court) working with those children published their findings in a Lancet 1998 paper which stated a mere possibility that the triple-jab MMR could be linked to autism, clearly stating that more research needed to be done. Dr. Wakefield had agreed to undertake research into this area and to testify as to its results in lawsuits filed on behalf of many, many children allegedly injured by the MMR. The government stopped legal aid and the lawsuits were unable to continue. There was evidence of pharma throwing its weight around and putting profits above vaccine safety, problems with the Urabe-strain MMR causing aseptic meningitis, concerns about live virus vaccines, and the interplay of 3 vaccines being given at once. Dr. Wakefield became targeted for career annihilation and character defamation, with the Lancet case study being called a "fraud" and Dr. Wakefield intentionally "discredited," a word which can simply mean defamed. Brian Deer, journalist, told to "find something big on MMR," led the attack against Dr. Wakefield which crossed the Atlantic into the U.S., shamefully without much journalistic scrutiny. It is no longer controversial that the gut and brain are connected. Dr. Wakefield writes of the chilling effect on truth in academic research when scientists are coerced into toeing an official line, in Callous Disregard. I have not seen Vaxxed; would like to.

Susan, I for one am extremely grateful to you for writing this letter to the BBC about Adam Rutherford, as I wanted to write myself, but with too much else happening, I didn't have time. I'm sure you spoke for many others, and these people (shills like AR) will not be getting away with it for much longer. I think they are getting desperate. Brian Cox has also criticized vaccine safety advocates on the BBC recently, adding that vaccines wiped out smallpox. I've noticed the topic coming up much more frequently on the BBC recently.

Susan, researching and then writing it all out till even an idiot could understand it; helps you to make sense of it for yourself.

That is a good thing. You start making sense of things that happened to you and your family that you may have missed. So, it is not all for nothing.

You educated yourself.

Now that you have done this , save it - so you can copy and paste in the future. This keeps you from some day doing a knee jerk and telling them in the most sewer language that rage can force out of your vocal chords, or finger tips what they really are and how deeply you hate them.

Blessing on you; I hope they all pay but as the years slip by, it don't look like it.

I recommend Dr. Lewis's excellent book, Science for Sale. In it he suggests that the "Autistic Enterocolitis" article Deer published in 2010 is taken wholesale from a report Ian Booth prepared for the GMC in 2006. At the GMC's request, Prof. Booth used the children's routine pathology reports and compared them to Table 1 in the Lancet article instead of using the documents Wakefield actually used to create the table, Dr. Dhillon's and Dr. Anthony's grading sheets.

Dr. Lewis provided the BMJ with the grading sheets, photomicrographs of the children's biopsy slides, Anthony's PowerPoint presentation in which he explained how the photomicrographs demonstrated colitis and affidavits from Dhillon and Anthony stating that they fully approved the Lancet manuscript, but the BMJ wasn't interested.

Thank you so much, John, for all the above excellent information. You may be interested to know that, after extensive correspondence with various MPs, Health Depts, and other people/organisations, I received a letter from the BBC asking me for my specific complaint about the odious Adam Rutherford. (I had penned a brief complaint with a copy to BBC of my letter to Dept. of Health). It took me quite a few hours, and I used a lot of information from AoA which you had posted some years ago to get the background.

It was 2 pages long and I sent it at the end of March. I am still awaiting a reply from the BBC. I won't write it all out, but one of the points I raised was about the lies and insults he puts on his Twitter feed. I notified them that, on Feb 17th AR had posted 'It's still coming, the open sewers of anti-vaxxers' and, as I pointed out to the BBC I was horrified by this Tweet because the people he refers to are mostly families of vaccine injured children.

I also let them know about his tweets that said 'the evil Andrew Wakefield', De Niro and Robert Kennedy 'peddling antivax bullshit' and Vaxxed is 'dangerous anti public health propaganda by a despicable fraud'

I asked them that 'at the very least, AR should be asked to stop vilifying Dr Wakefield and the Lancet study, both on the BBC and on social media'

The complaint was prompted by his slur on Inside Science on 23rd February, with Fiona Godlee.

Thank you again for all the information you provide us with. It really is very useful.

Thank you, John Stone. They actually "invited" you or "Age of Autism" even to submit something "for the inquiry" and then rejected your attempts? Why the rejection(s)? Was there something binding that would prevent them from glossing over any submission unwanted or invited as seemingly the usual approach to these things? Is there evidence here that not all among them would cooperate with the glossing?

@Bill, the book Evidence of Harm by Wakefield I believe clarifies actual events up to the publication date. All I can personally attest is that Wakefield's representation of events hasn't changed (at least not for the nearly 12 years I've tried to keep track of things) from following his presentations at conferences, etc. I've never met Dr. Wakefield. The "official" version of things has been in flux (except for the part that there is "no evidence of" a link for any vaccine with autism) and took some time to come to the version parroted by just about every medical personality now (still with some embellishments: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FumTh_IaKgA ) who goes public to promote vaccination.

This extra feature of the VaxXed documentary, if you haven't seen it, might answer some questions (I'm sure only some of them):

If Trump wants to fully pummel the Main Stream Media in to complete oblivion and just destroy their credibility completely, wouldn't shining a bright spot light on the Deer fraud about Dr. Andrew Wakefield be the best way to show how deceitful and controlled the media really are?

Imagine proving beyond doubt that what they have been saying for all these years was a lie, a deliberate attempt to hide the truth from we the people. We should petition Trump to vindicate Wakefield as he rightfully should be vindicated.

In my opinion this would be the best starting point. How would the media come back from that being exposed? C'mon Trump, this is your chance to show the American people what a complete lying disgusting pile of industry funded trash the lying media is. Destroy them Trump, please. You will have the truth on your side and our full support.

I am able to obtain a full copy of the study, so I've read this from front to back.

Basically, in this study, the researchers wanted to know whether the TIMING of MMR affected autism risk. The case an control groups are defined as follows:

CASE GROUP: Children with autism that received MMRCONTROL GROUP: Children without autism that received MMR

The case and control groups were matched on age, gender, and race.

The population set that they worked with contained a subpopulation as well, the ones with a Georgia state birth certificate. With this subgroup, they were able to obtain more information, such as birth weight, mother's maternal age and education, in order to do further analysis to ensure that no other confounders could explain any MMR-autism association found (if any).

The researchers then picked the following cut-off dates (18, 24, and 36 months).

Let's say for example, they picked 18 months as the cut-off date. They will then determine the number of children in the case group who received their first MMR LESS THAN 18 months, and compare them to the number children in the CASE group who received their first MMR OVER 18 months. They get a ratio.

They then do the same thing with the CONTROL group and get a ratio. Then they compare the two different ratios, and get what's called an ODDS RATIO (OR).

What this means is that if you were vaccinated under 36 months, the odds of you being higher risk for autism is NOT DUE TO CHANCE. This was even MORE significant (higher OR) when you did the calculation on the subpopulation of boys only. These are the results from the original study.

Controversy

You've seen the example of the OR being analyzed for the total population, and for sex. The data collected on the total sample included gender, age group, and RACE.

However, for the total sample, the researchers conveniently LEFT OUT the analysis for RACE, even though it was in their analysis plan. According to Dr William Thompson, senior epidemiologist at the CDC who whistleblew this, he said the following about the FINAL STUDY DRAFT:

Family Background and Other Data Collection:

Information extracted from child's school record included child's date of birth, sex, birth state, and race.

As well, the final draft plan indicated that a potential confounder available for analysis was race

Statistical Analyses

Potential confounding variables will be evaluated individually for their association with the autism case definition. Those with an odds ratio p-value < 0.20 will be included as covariates in a conditional logistic regression model to estimate adjusted odds ratio for the association between age at vaccination and autism.

The only variable available to be assessed as a potential confounder using the entire sample is child's race

.

This is the HEART of the controversy

. William Thompson already crunched the numbers for race, and he knew that there was a statistically significant effect. The lead researchers wanted to make that effect disappear somehow, but no matter how they crunched the numbers, it wouldn't disappear. So rather than report on it, they conveniently omitted it from their published draft, and potentially destroyed data that may have proved the existence of this effect.

So if race (blacks) is a significant factor, and sex (boys) is a significant factor, what does that say about the risk factor for african american boys?

Yes, huge connivance at almost every level from the government bureacracy.

Benedetta

I think we have seen various levels (and episodes) of disaffection for government in the UK as elsewhere. It some respects this was Blair all over again as with the WMD but in this case he had the bureaucracy right behind him and so the deception continues, pretty much succesfully to date. But of course it is a pack of lies and if the wind changes they will be in trouble.

I remember writing to the Information Commissioner's Office.
They couldn’t /wouldn’t help me I wrote back to the Courts to intervene and investigate how this journalist seems to have been able to 'read' (in his own words on his website) confidential reports pertaining to the MMR/MR Litigation (especially those it seems from the application hearing re withdrawal of Legal Aid which was held in Private and for which the MMR10 group did not even see the Judgment until Judge Leveson ordered that we may do so.)
How did he got hold of these reports?
He was not and is not party to the Litigation in the UK and if I had passed these onto anyone outside the Litigation I would have been in Contempt of Court which I understand to be extremely serious.
Brian Deer also placed the Judgement on his Website with our childrens names in that Judgement.Which he removed before anyone could copy as sliket does..

Of course, VaXxed was primarily about the Thompson issue, and one ought to remember that publication of the Thompson/DeStefano and the IOM meating happened a couple of weeks ahead of the Sunday Times/Deer ambush of Wakefield. But clearly there was nothing substantialy wrong with the Wakefield paper and the BMJ ought to have retracted their farago of allegations by the end of 2011 at the latest. The Committee were citing allegations which had proved completely unsustainable and they ought to have known better. It is absolutely no good them saying something is the case because it was said somewhere six years before when they have made it the prime example of modern scientific fraud and a political issue. It obviously was not a good example of fraud at all - when we know there many and everyday which simply coincide with policy.

If you are saying it is complicated, yes it is complicated but only because governemnts have constructed a web lies surrouding it. If there was case against the Wakefield paper they would not allbe hiding behind Brian Deer, a journalist specialising in social media.

Recently, a CDC shill was on local talk radio. He spoke about the Wakefield case, but without mentioning any names. I saw "Vaxxed" in late-2016, and I have TRIED to follow the details of the whole case. But, the whole thing is a convoluted, confusing mess. I really have no idea what did, or didn't happen, and I must assume that is the point. The pro-vaxxers are relying on mass confusion. Otherwise, their critique of Wakefield would be simple, and easily understood, with verifiable evidence.
Vaxxed did little for me, but add to the confusion. Just sayin'.....

Thanks. I don't believe that the Committee actually did "hand it on" to the HEFCE - perhaps they were just suggesting it to Godlee. But the point is that UCL backed down: they looked into and realised there wasn't anything to find and Godlee didn't get what she wanted. But she has been on the air recently, schmoozing with Adam Rutherfood, and pretending their allegations are still good, when they were never good, and they have been flung in their face several times over.

Thanks for trying John. Sometimes, our letters do have some influence 'behind the scenes', as happened during Godlee's attempts a few years ago to have ALL of Dr Wakefield's Lancet co-authors discredited, and ALL research papers with Andrew Wakefield as co-authors retracted. Thankfully the then Science and Technology Committee refused to address the issue, instead handing it on to the official body handling complaints about scientific research integrity. They saw no case to answer.. University College London also refused to progress the complaint from Godlee.

"The reality is that when it comes to vaccination the British establishment cannot deal with the truth in any or form"

In the US ... the "British establishment" would be known by another name .. which is the SWAMP .. a term that describes exactly what the "establishment in the USA" has come to be known .. a CORRUPT SWAMP .. that President Trump has promised to DRAIN.